Clearwater Advisors report finds Obama wins public speaking contest with McCain but falls short of great oratory

Released on: August 22, 2008, 1:33 am

Press Release Author: Propeller Communications

Industry: Government

Press Release Summary: As Barack Obama heads in to next week's Democratic conventionwith John McCain bearing down on him in the polls, he can take comfort in the factthat scientists have confirmed he is the better public speaker. Senator Obama,however, has still got a long way to go to become the perfect orator. His range offacial expressions, in particular, needs to increase.

Press Release Body: Speech analysis of Senators Obama and McCain by the VoxInstitute for Clearwater Advisors found that the pitch of Obama's voice is excellentand that it "reflects very clearly the emotional nature of each topic." McCain'svoice, in contract, is "low-pitched and very monotonous."

The good news for Obama, however, ends there with the research showing that concernis the dominating attitude of his vocal style and that his facial repertory "is notvery varied". It concludes that the "absence of positive emotional displays is amajor feature of his facial expressions." McCain's facial repertory is also "verypoor", and, "most of the time he has a poker face."

James McBrien, Managing Director at Clearwater Advisors, said: "Non verbalcommunication is more important than verbal communication in gaining the trust of anaudience. This research shows that while Obama's verbal communication is excellent,his non verbal communication skills, particularly his facial expressions need work.In terms of public speaking he already has a lead on John McCain but he needs toexpand his range of facial expressions to become a great orator."

The analysis was conducted by Dr Branka Zei Pollerman at the Vox Institute in Genevausing samples of McCain\'s and Obama\'s voices. Four samples of each man were takenfor sampling delivering 'angry criticism', 'positive future prospects', 'sad facts',and 'an emotionally neutral statement'. These were digitised and submitted toacoustical signal analysis and facial analysis. Dr Pollerman used Facial ActionCoding Systems (FACS) developed by Professor Paul Ekman at the University ofCalifornia, to conduct the analysis.

During the research, Dr Pollerman also analysed the speaking style of Prime MinisterGordon Brown. The results revealed that Brown has "perfect fluency" and "skillfullychunks the information into sense groups.allowing for easy comprehension of hismessages". However his "voice does not reflect the emotional nature of each topic"and that his "facial repertory is limited to a recurrent pattern combining theexpressions of sadness, anger and disgust."